The present invention relates to closures for containers and is particularly directed to a safety closure for containers adapted to store substances such as drugs or chemicals which may be potentially harmful to children or even some adults. In the past, there have been various proposals to provide safety caps for medicine bottles and similar containers. One common closure of this type includes a rotatable cap having an outwardly extending lug which must be aligned with an indicia on the container or on a band surrounding the container neck. After it has been properly aligned, the lug is pushed upwardly to open the bottle. While closures of this type have provided relatively good protection against unauthorized access to the container contents by children, the containers have the substantial disadvantage that they are difficult to operate particularly by aged or infirm users, people with arthritis or the like.
Other types of closures have been proposed which operate on the combination lock principle. Examples of this type of closure are shown in Lesteavel U.S. Pat. No. 3,830,394, Meyer U.S. Pat. No. 3,850,324, Dragon U.S. Pat. No. 3,059,801, and Rosevear U.S. Pat. No. 2,226,390. These closures while requiring less force to operate suffer from the disadvantage that they are complex, relatively expensive, and difficult for some people to manipulate.